Chameleon Carriers: The Worst Trucking Companies on the Road

David Craig: Chameleon carriers are the worst of the worst. These are companies that can’t survive and play by the rules. And so they have to cheat and falsify who they are in order to stay in business to get loads from brokers and shippers. And there’s been statistics that show that a chameleon carrier is three to four times more likely to be in a serious wreck involving a fatality.

I’m David Craig, a board-certified truck accident attorney who’s dedicated over 40 years to helping the victims of devastating semi-truck, large truck, and other commercial motor vehicle wrecks. When the stakes are high, you need the information to make the right decision.

After tragedy strikes, many people don’t know where to begin or what questions to ask. It is my goal to empower you with the knowledge and resources you need to help you understand your rights and to protect you and your family. On the Ask David episodes, we flip the script. Instead of me asking the questions, I answer them. This is After the Crash.

Ashley Napier: Hello everybody and welcome to a new edition of After the Crash Podcast, Ask David edition. As you can see, we are in a brand new space. We have an amazing podcast room now and you guys will be able to find out a little bit more information on that here soon. But David, welcome.

David Craig: Well, thank you. And it’s so exciting that we’re finally down here. We used to do these from my computer and your computer, so you were upstairs and I was downstairs and we used to do them by Zoom. Now we’re actually doing them in person, face to face-

Ashley Napier: In person.

David Craig: … in this extraordinary room that was built by Justin Rock and Aaron Sherman and Bobby Craig. They did a great job designing this, putting it together and I’m excited to be down here.

Ashley Napier: Yep. Absolutely amazing. So we get to kick off June with a brand new room and kind of a interesting topic, one that you’ve actually gotten some press on lately, but I would like to talk about chameleon carriers.

David Craig: Yeah. Chameleon carriers are a hot topic right now. 60 Minutes just did something. Channel 13, WTHR, I was a guest on there. She did a segment on it and I did a quote. She quoted me on it. So it is a hot topic. They’re extraordinarily dangerous. So a chameleon carrier is a trucking company that changes its colors. That’s why we call it a chameleon, as chameleons change colors.

And it’s a bad company. It’s a dangerous company. And it’s a company that’s got really bad equipment, has bad drivers, bad safety records. And when they are about ready to be shut down and closed down, they morph into a new company with a new name, and then they’ll get a new DOT number. And so it fools people, and so then they can get loads and get shipments. The shippers and the brokers will hire them because they don’t realize they’re this horrible company that was about ready to be put out of business.

Ashley Napier: Right. That was my first takeaway when I first started here and was introduced to chameleon carriers. It was like, “Wait a minute. So everything is the exact same with the exception of a DOT number and the name?”

David Craig: Yeah. And sometimes it’s really crappy. We had a case down in North Vernon and our clients were the Megels. So it was a bad chameleon carrier. So this is a trucking company that killed their family, ended up killing their mom and dad, Mr. Megel’s mom and dad. But what was really horrible about it was there was a trucking company, and they were getting fined and penalized by the government. They were struggling to stay open because their equipment was out of service, taken out of service. Their equipment was bad.

It was not repaired properly. Their drivers were horrible. And then what was really frustrating was that they were having trouble getting insurance. So the insurance company was looking at it saying, “Man, you guys are bad. You’re getting ready to be closed down. The government’s getting ready to close you down because you’re so bad. And for us to get you insurance, we’re going to have to do something.”

And so what they did was assisted them and, in my opinion, aided and abetted them into morphing into a different company. But later after the wreck, when we did our investigation, you could even tell the barn still had the old name on it, their shed where they had the trucks. It was the same bad equipment. And in that case, the equipment that killed our clients had bad faulty brakes. That had been one of the reasons why they were getting ready to be shut down. One of the reasons why they had been fined and penalized was because of their equipment had bad brakes.

And lo and behold, on that day, their brakes failed and they killed our clients. And so that’s an example of a chameleon carrier. And what was really bad in that case too, is the owner of that company, he had a new driver and so it wasn’t one of the same drivers. He had a new driver. The driver called him and said, “Hey, look, I’m driving your truck and the brakes are bad and I can’t drive it any further. It’s too dangerous.” The owner of the trucking company said, “Get back in your truck and drive.” And the driver said, “No, I’m not going to.” And the owner said, “Yeah, you are, or I’ll fire you.” And the driver said, “Well, you’re going to have to fire me.” So he fired him.

And then the owner went down and got in that daggone truck and drove it despite the fact that he had been warned by the driver, and the driver had been fired because he wouldn’t drive that vehicle. The owner gets in that truck and drives it himself and then the brakes failed and he rear-ended our clients. And so that is a chameleon carrier. It was a company that was on the verge of being closed by the government, has been penalized because the equipment was bad, was not repaired, not maintained. They had drivers who were higher incidents of wrecks and fines and traffic tickets, and instead of just going out of business, they just reorganized with a new DOT number and a new name.

Ashley Napier: Right. So rather than doing the right thing, which is what we all hope that others will do for us, do the right thing, they decided to just cut corners and conceal.

David Craig: And the chameleon carriers are the worst of the worst. These are companies that can’t survive and play by the rules. And so they have to cheat and falsify who they are in order to stay in business to get loads from brokers and shippers. And there’s been statistics that show that a chameleon carrier is three to four times more likely to be in a serious wreck involving a fatality. And it’s a race to the bottom. It’s like the worst companies, they go down this path and they unfortunately change their colors in order to try to fake people out so that they can stay in business.

Ashley Napier: Yeah. The case that you just spoke about, the Megel case, was the first chameleon carrier that I had ever come in contact with when I first started working here. And I know you’ve worked on several other chameleon carrier cases. Is there one that comes to mind that is different than the Megel case or do they all have that same underlying bad company…

David Craig: I think they’re all similar, in the sense that they’re avoiding penalties, they’re avoiding closures, they’re having insurance issues. They’re having trouble getting loads. And so we had another one, William Card, he was killed by a semi-driver who, although it wasn’t a chameleon carrier when he killed our client, he then immediately changed the name, changed the DOT. That driver turned into a chameleon carrier following our wreck.

And so you see it all the time, and I think it’s a plague on our roadways and it endangers all of us because you don’t know when you’re driving next to a truck, is this truck a chameleon carrier or not? Is this somebody that has bad brakes, that has a dangerous piece of equipment, or a bad driver? It could very well be. And we’re riding right next to it. Luckily there is a big movement right now in the federal government and the state governments to crack down on chameleon carriers and hopefully they do that because it is just extraordinarily dangerous.

Ashley Napier: Oh, absolutely. And like you said, you never know. They don’t have neon signs saying, “Hey, I’m a bad trucking company and recently changed my name.” That would be ideal, but I think that having that experience of handling chameleon carrier cases before helps us at least know what to look for.

So if you’ve recently been in a car wreck, you probably don’t know if you’ve been in a truck accident with a chameleon carrier. Are there certain things that those that have been affected by a recent truck wreck should look for? Or in turn, other attorneys watching the podcast, maybe they could… they’re not sure if they have a chameleon carrier or not, are there rocks that they could turn over?

David Craig: Yeah. So I think the first thing is that chameleon carriers, they’re horrible companies and they’re running with minimum insurance. So they’re carrying 750,000, maybe sometimes the insurance company makes them buy a million, but the federal minimums are 750 [thousand]. And so these are companies that a lot of times when they kill or hurt your clients, and a lot of times, unfortunately, they’re fatalities, then the trucking company wants to pitch their $750,000 right away.

And the problem is if you don’t do trucking, then you may think that that’s all the coverage there is. And so one of the questions you have to ask yourself is, first of all, did anybody else aid and abet this company? Did anybody help this company turn into a chameleon carrier? And then also, what about the broker and the shipper? What did they know? What should they have known? And the law is a little bit, right now, up in the air, but I think a truck accident attorney’s going to look at it and say, “Okay, let’s investigate. Let’s see if there’s any additional coverages.”

Now sometimes there is and sometimes there isn’t, but you don’t want to not leave any rocks unturned. You want to look and see if there is. And a truck accident attorney, somebody who’s board-certified in truck accident law, they’re going to know what to do and where to look and how to investigate. It’s a huge problem, and I think the other thing is, is that people in the community and people listening to this, hopefully I think the government has to be involved. We need better legislation. There’s some pending. I think now we need to take advantage of the fact that there is a lot of press about chameleon carriers.

Channel 13, the story that they ran on chameleon carriers here locally, it was about the four Amish folks that were killed by a chameleon carrier. And so we have multiple cases that involve chameleon carriers, but so do other states, so do other plaintiff lawyers all throughout the country. And so we have to really focus on stopping that. Not only should we recover for our clients, but how can we change things? And I think when I go back to, I think, the minimum insurance, minimum insurance has been that way since it’s… 1980 is when they passed the legislation, and so that was $750,000. So it hasn’t been raised since 1980. Inflation has gone up on everything else. Everything else costs more.

Ashley Napier: Right. I was going to say, what’s a carton of milk? Isn’t that the typical comparison that they use?

David Craig: Yeah. And also what’s the medical treatment?

Ashley Napier: Oh, my gosh.

David Craig: Just think 1980 when you got hurt and you went to the hospital, it was a lot cheaper than today in 2026 when this episode’s being filmed. And why is that important? Well, when you leave the minimums low, insurance companies don’t have an incentive to screen the people who are buying the insurance. So it’s easier for them to sell a million dollars, 750,000 or a million dollar policy to a scuzzy, bad, dangerous trucking company because their payout is not going to be that huge.

Now, if you raise that limit to five million or above, five million basically just would keep up with inflation. But if you go five million or above, then suddenly now the insurance company has more to lose. If the insurance companies have more to lose, the one thing we do know is that they’ll scrutinize-

Ashley Napier: You know it.

David Craig: … the people who are buying the insurance. And so that to me is one of the most important things is let’s raise the minimum insurance, not only because it compensates the families that are hurt, but more importantly, it drives the insurance industry to do a better job screening these companies. And then next, let’s make penalties, severe penalties for the people who are the chameleon carriers.

If you’re a chameleon carrier, you deserve to be punished. You should deserve jail time, penalties, and I think we should make it harsher and tougher on those people who decide to become chameleon carriers. And then I think in enforcement, I think from the federal government, in the Megel case, when they applied for their new DOT, had the government gone out to their facility, they would have realized it’s the same company and they never would have allowed them to get their DOT number and go continuing business. So the government has to be given more resources to be able to vet the people who are switching and getting new DOT numbers.

Ashley Napier: Yeah. One thing we know the insurance companies will always want to keep all their money in their pockets for as long as possible.

David Craig: Absolutely.

Ashley Napier: So if we raise it, like you said, there’s definitely something to lose there. From a paralegal perspective, one thing that I would say, if there are any other paralegals listening, is it’s always a telltale sign for me if an insurance company is just trying to get you to take that policy limit. They keep following up, you’re like, “Oh, there’s got to be something else there. Let’s dig a little deeper and figure it out.”

Because I feel like nine times out of 10 they’re looking to get out quickly because they’ve got something to cover up. Whether it’s a bad truck driver, whether it’s a chameleon carrier, whether it’s something with a broker or shipper, there’s a reason why they want to give you money quickly. And as a paralegal, you bring it to your attorneys, just anything that you can do from a paralegal standpoint to help your attorney along would be fantastic. And that’s one of my tips and tricks, if you will.

David Craig: Well, yeah, we’ve got a new podcast, Tips and Tricks.

Ashley Napier: Paralegal Tips and Tricks.

David Craig: Well, I think that hopefully people listening to this are a little bit more familiar with what a chameleon carrier is. Chameleon carriers, we all should be on the same side. I’m not against truckers. I’m against the bad truckers. The majority of the truck drivers are really good, caring people who are just out trying to support their families, but the bad ones are extraordinarily dangerous and they’re killing and hurting people. We should all agree that we do not want dangerous truckers on the roadway. And that shouldn’t be controversial. It should be something that we can all agree on and we should all fight and work hard to make sure that when we’re driving on the road with our family that we’re safe.

Ashley Napier: Yeah, absolutely. Couldn’t agree more. I feel like the good truck drivers, they know bad truck drivers. They know bad trucking companies. So I just feel like if we could all work together to the benefit of everybody, that would be outstanding. But I know that this day and age, it doesn’t really happen that easy. That’s all I had for you in this June episode. Did I miss anything chameleon carrier-wise or have we at least done a good ballpark?

David Craig: I think we gave some people hopefully something to think about, and hopefully we’ve shed some light on a really touchy, really tough topic that’s hot in the news right now. So thank you very much.

Ashley Napier: Yeah, absolutely.

David Craig: Appreciate it.

Ashley Napier: Yeah, no problem. Thank you guys for tuning in to this June edition of After the Crash Podcast, Ask David edition. We will see you next month for… I don’t know, I’ll come up with something. But if you do have anything, any suggestions that you want to talk about, please, please, please hit us up in the comment section or shoot us an email afterthecrashpodcast@ckflaw.com. We would love to hear from you. Thank you guys so much. See you next time. Bye.

David Craig: Thanks for listening to another episode of After the Crash. If you or someone you know has been involved in a semi-truck wreck and you want to talk, go to ckflaw.com or give me a call at 1-800-Ask-David. If you want additional information about semi-truck wrecks or how to pick the right attorney, check out my two books, Semitruck Wreck: A Guide for Victims and Their Families, or It’s Never Been Easier to Hire the Wrong Attorney. Both of them are available on Amazon, or you can download them for free on our website, ckflaw.com.